Saturday, June 20, 2009

We've now gotten literally dozens of emails saying, in effect, the same thing about the first of the summer shows recorded* at Matt's:

Loved the show (and everyone's taken to using the "guerilla TV" appellation);

the sound was better;

the Skype calls sounded a million times better than the studio calls;

keep using Skype forever!

We couldn't agree more on the audio quality. In fact, that is one of the things that floored me especially about last Sunday's show. However, please note that the reason Matt and I sounded as good as we did was that we were using the Non-Prophets mikes, and holding them right to our chins. That invariably leads to very good voice pickup, but constantly holding your mike isn't the easiest way to do a 90-minute TV show, and besides, I felt like any moment we'd be expected to burst into freestyle rap, and neither of us had ballcaps to wear backwards.

Regarding Skype: indeed, the sound quality there was marvelous, but there are advantages and disadvantages there as well. For one thing, there's no way (at least, not one we were able to employ last Sunday) to screen and queue multiple calls at once, like we do in the studio. This was what necessitated the procedure of requiring viewers to IM us first, so we could call them back instead. Again, worked okay for one show, but I'm not sure it'd be the sort of setup we'd like to have each week.

Remember that the Access studios are undergoing a million dollars worth of renovation all summer. Hopefully, one of the things that gets a massive tech upgrade will be the phone system, allowing greater clarity in the studio. In other words, we need to do a wait-and-see before committing one way or the other to the permanent use of Skype.

Now, let's see how well things go with the show tomorrow, and what other areas of techie improvement we can undertake. I really think it's incredible we can do a global, live television show right from a residence! (I still cannot, even at my most whimsical, bring myself to call Matt's bachelor pad "Dillahunty International Studios," though I guess that's what it's becoming, and to be fair, I've worked in messier studios.) This would have been inconceivable even five years ago, and it really goes to show how the Internets have democratized the media.

* I had to stop myself because I began to type "taped" where I wrote "recorded." Nobody "tapes" anything any more. The times, change they do. My bones, they creak so.

16 comments:

As for the issue with the mics, you could always try finding a headset with a mic on it (WalMart sells Cyber Acoustics headsets for $20, they're really good quality), or you could get a couple mic stands and sit at a table.

I really don't think a new studio will help that much with the phone quality. Even when you watch the big networks like CNN and MSNBC you can definitely tell when someone is on the phone. It's a limitation of the old phone network.

I think you can solve your screening problems with a second skype account and multiple computers. People can screen on one computer and the main account, and then you can transfer the call to the account that the hosts talk to. This allows people to call you again (since they can't call directly to the on-air account) and it allows to screen and route calls more traditionally. If you want multiple screeners, you can use multiple computers all logged into one skype account.

I think so anyway....I'm not a Skype expert by any stretch of the imagination. :)

As a suggestion, you could try hosting a conference call and adding new participants to the call as they call in. The host of the conference call can mute participants from the right click context menu.

So, if you mute all the participants then to take a call on air you can unmute the specific caller you want to speak to. That way you can get up to 25 callers on line at once.

I have no idea how this will work out bandwidth and management wise, but it might be worth an experiment.

I often listen to podcasts while riding my motorcycle to work at 75 mph. It drives me nuts when a caller comes on and I can't hear a word of it because the high frequencies are filtered by phone lines, and the volume is way out of whack with the hosts'. For that matter, it's almost as bad in the car. Please, make it a priority to keep the audio quality high. I don't care if you have to bungee the mic's to your foreheads and run a dozen pc's to queue the Skype calls. Do it!

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PLEASE NOTE: The Atheist Experience has moved to a new location, and this blog is now closed to comments. To participate in future discussions, please visit http://www.freethoughtblogs.com/axp.The Atheist Experience is a weekly live call-in television show sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin. This independently-run blog (not sponsored by the ACA) features contributions from current and former hosts and co-hosts of the show.